Archive:Sordren
What seems a bitter, gray death knight today was once among the proudest of the Alliance's soldiers. Background Sordren was born into the Slatefist family of Thelsamar roughly forty-five years before the Orc's arrival on Azeroth and the outbreak of the First War. His father was a local school teacher and his mother brewed and sold ale. His early childhood was rather uneventful. However when news of the fall of Stormwind and the potential of an Orcish advance into Khaz Modan reached Thelsamar, Sordren, along with many other men coming of age at the time, dropped out of schooling to enlist in the Ironforge army. He became a rifleman of the 82nd Ironforge Brigade. After many bitter months of war, Sordren emerged a different person. The innocent boy that enlisted was now a hardened veteran of the Second War. He lost a number of childhood friends that he enlisted in the army with during the fighting, and his own father was killed during the fall of Thelsamar. Much of the army was disbanded following the war, including the 82nd, leaving only a small force to keep order and maintain the Orcish internment camps. Having no interest in rebuilding his ravaged homeland, Sordren decided to move north to areas of Lordaeron that weren't hit as hard by the war. He worked several odd jobs as a farmhand, a barkeep, a horse breeder, and a boar trapper. He finally settled down in the human city of Stratholme, practicing as a gunsmith for several years. He finally met another Dwarven woman by the name of Faena in the city that worked as a barmaiden at a local tavern. Eventually they fell in love, and Sordren decided it was time to move home. He saved enough gold from his work to purchase a small plot of land in the Wetlands, and wedded Faena prior to departing Stratholme. After several weeks of traveling south, he finally arrived at his own land in the swamps with his now pregnant wife. By the summer of the year, he had completed construction on his farm and by the fall, his first and only son Modarin was born. For several years he lived in peace, raising rams and his boy before war called him off once again. The Horde was breaking out of the internment camps in masses and rumors of a plague gripping the northern villages of Lordaeron were spreading; the armies of the Alliance of Lordaeron were reformed as a result. Leaving his family in the dead of night with nothing but a note of farewell, the 82nd Ironforge reformed at Menethil Harbor and marched into Lordaeron. After long weeks of marching they arrived at Hearthglen. Serving under Prince Arthas himself, Sordren was a veteran of the siege of Hearthglen, but he lacked the stomach to kill many of his old friends. Along with hundreds of others, Sordren deserted at the gates of Stratholme. Following Jaina to the lands of Kalimdor and believing themselves to be the sole survivors of the genocide in Lordaeron, they struggled to survive in the harsh wastelands of the Barrens. After many brutal months of enduring the war in Kalimdor, it finally ended at the battle of Mount Hyjal. An extremely small number of troops that left Lordaeron were remaining by the end of the war, and Sordren had lost many good friends. Sordren himself was near death after a critical stomach wound sustained during the battle of Mount Hyjal. He developed a hatred of the Night Elves after the many skirmishes with them in Ashenvale, and what he viewed as using the Alliance as cannon fodder on the slopes of Hyjal. Following the Third War, the few survivors of the Alliance Expedition settled on a rocky isle off the coast of Dustwallow Marsh. Here, Sordren did a limited amount of building on the city of Theramore; his stomach wound limiting the amount of labor he could exert. Months after the founding of Theramore, the first ships from the east began to arrive since the expedition themselves arrived. Kul Tiras had arrived and attempted to incite a war between the Alliance and the Orcish nation of Durotar. Most of the original expedition, having fought alongside these Orcs, refused to raise steel against them after shedding blood next to them hunting down the demons in Ashenvale. Admiral Proudmoore opted to deal with the reluctance to fight by executing them, but in an ironic twist, the Orcs actually saved the lives of Sordren and the original expedition's veterans by storming the city of Theramore and ending the admiral. Sick of Kalimdor, Sordren hopped on board one of the first ships departing Theramore for the east; he made a vow to never return as the shores of Kalimdor faded over the horizon. He wanted nothing more than to return home to his wife by the time the shores of Khaz Modan came into view. However, despite the note he left, Faena believed Sordren left her to sleep with another mistress. She ran him off of his own farm. By now his son was almost of age, and had taken over the ram raising business. Bitter and believing himself abandoned by the world, he began to make the trip to Ironforge where his mother was living. The bad news continued upon his arrival. He learned from his brother that his mother thought he had died in the fall of Stratholme and she herself died of grief, and with that, his brother vowed to never speak with him again. Sordren was for the first time, truly alone in the world. Fortune did smile upon him eventually, however. He tinkered with rifles and drank heavily in Ironforge's taverns while at his all-time low. One day, he made a breakthrough in rifle technology; this gave rise to the semi-automatic rifles that are standard issue of today's world. He sold his schematic to the Ironforge senate for use in the military for a healthy sum of gold. His luck continued to climb upon being offered a rank of command in the 82nd Ironforge Brigade. Now a wealthy general of the Ironforge army, Sordren's depression ended as the post Third War world shifted into modern times. Involvement Sordren's first opportunity to command troops in battle came with him being forced to break his vow to never return to Kalimdor. The armies of Ironforge were called once again to serve the Alliance when the Night Elves Sordren loathed called upon the world to combat the Qiraji threat in Silithus. Commanding the Ironforge arm of the Might of Kalimdor, Sordren drove his troops across the blistering sands of southern Kalimdor. He became distinguished in his command and promoted to the rank of Marshal after several acts of gallantry in the many skirmishes against the Twilight's Hammer cultists and the Silithid forces. He returned home to Khaz Modan hailed as a hero, parading his troops around the city of Ironforge. During the final battle at the gates of Ahn'Qiraj, he sustained a wound that required a piece of iron to be placed in his back. Thus Sordren began to be referred to by his troops as "Old Iron-Sides". He saw the rank of Grand Marshal for being the first soldier to enter the Dark Portal following the Burning Legion's attempts to invade Azeroth through it. His solo bayonet charge across the small field before the Portal swarming with demons inspired the combined Horde and Alliance army holding the line to charge behind him. However he was critically wounded on the other side of the portal, and had to be transported back to Ironforge for treatment; thus missing out on most of the action in Outland. By the time symptoms of the Scourge plague began arising in Stormwind just prior to the invasion of Northrend, he had made a full recovery from his injuries sustained at the Dark Portal. With most of the Alliance army finishing up the war in Outland, only a few Stormwind militia brigades and mercenary soldiers were available to defend the city. Sordren and the 82nd Ironforge were called up to reinforce the situation; eventually becoming fully in command of the city's military during the crisis. He became famous for defending refugees of the city holed inside the Cathedral when the plague was at its height against a swarm of ghouls, and he became infamous for filling the fountain in the center of Cathedral Square with the bodies of suspected and confirmed cultists he personally executed with memories of Lordaeron becoming fresh in his mind once again. When the Scourge attempted a formal invasion of the city via the recently rebuilt harbor, most of the army had returned from the Outland front. Sordren's soldiers were assigned to defend the first tier of the harbor and the docks. They were overwhelmed by abominations and surrounded. The small group of huddled survivors of the initial push by the Scourge huddled behind a makeshift barricade of crates and shields, lobbing grenades and shots from the relative safety. Sordren's arm was broken after being picked up and thrown by a frost wyrm during the battle, but the 82nd Ironforge became famous once again for being the only brigade to not abandon the lower tier following the initial push, and holding their ground against the swarm of Scourge with relatively few casualties. When the invasion of Northrend began in earnest, the 82nd Ironforge was to stage an offensive into Lordaeron to retake ground before the Horde took advantage of the lessened Scourge presence. However he was met with disaster during the raid on Andorhal. He successfully overwhelmed the Scourge there, thanks to their weakening by the Argent Dawn forces in the area, and dug his forces in for the inevitable Scourge counterattack. However, he wasn't expecting the Scarlet Crusade to swarm out of Hearthglen believing the Alliance forces as harbingers of a second plague. Very few of his troops were left standing after the Scarlet push, and most of his defenses were destroyed. He hadn't enough time to dispose of the bodies when the Scourge arrived. The Scarlets along with his own warriors rose again to battle the few survivors. They were surrounded in the town square, only a small barricade of shields for protection, as they fell one by one to the undead onslaught. Sordren was the last to fall. He stood atop a pile of the corpses of fallen undead, a broadsword he picked up from the body of one of his solders after he ran out of ammunition held loosely in one hand from the fatigue of prolonged fighting. A hooded figure ontop of a skeletal horse menacingly walked toward him giving a half-hearted applaud. The last thing Sordren heard as a living individual was the mocking laughter of the death knight as he impaled Sordren with his blade, and the foul stench of a ghoul's breath as it jumped on top of him to bite down. He awoke on the cold floor of Acherus. He is unable to remember by glimpses, like a nightmare, of committing the slaughters at Havenshire and New Avalon. He gained full control of himself on the bloodstained grounds of Light's Hope Chapel, a changed monster in dark plated armor, plagued with rage and bitterness at the events that had transpired, and retaining his past memories thanks to his brain not having time to rot... Recognizing his past achievements he has been welcomed into the ranks of the Brotherhood of Iron where he was placed in charge of overseeing the transition of former Scourge Death Knights to a life of serving the Alliance and especially Iron Forge. Strategy Sordren fights with cold, calculated blows in rapid succession. His defense is just as impressive, balancing the two. On top of his, being undead makes him unable to tire. This combination makes him a deadly fighter on the field. If necessary, he has also retained the knowledge of the use of firearms and explosives from his past life should the need for such improvisation arise. Quotes "Just remember lads, that if we fall here, they may not know our names, but by the Light they will remember what we did! They will remember us as the stubborn bastards that didn't pansy out to rotters!" - addressing his troops while surrounded at Stormwind Harbor "Dark Iron! Kill it!" "Elf! Get it!" "Me life for Ironforge!" "Yer slow woman... " Trivia Known as "General Pickles" to his closest guildmates. See also * The Brotherhood of Iron External links * Category:Archived Characters Category:Archived